The African Union commission has provided for the Turkana geothermal plant, 101.5 million Kenyan Shillings (more than $980,000). The grant was received by Olsuswa Energy, the firm in charge of the plant’s construction, and will be used to carry out technical studies as well as upgrade the infrastructure which is located in the Turkana County. The project’s development will take place...

The Sao Tomé & Principe national assembly has approved, unanimously, an agreement for the mutual exemption of visas for diplomatic and service passports’ holders, between the archipelago and China. This was announced last Thursday by the parliament’s president, José Diogo (picture). This agreement is part of the sectoral cooperation programme initiated by the two countries, after their...

In its new operational update released last Thursday, Ivanhoe Mines said it would proceed to a new resource estimation at its Kakula Discovery deposit, in DR Congo, by the end of this year.  The new estimation which will cover the whole deposit, will be based on a 12km extension delineated as a result of a drilling campaign carried out by the firm throughout the third quarter of this year,...

The Kenyan government has just concluded with Ireland a five-year agreement to boost its agricultural production, Businessdailyafrica reports. This agreement will fall under the 2017-2021 Ireland-Kenya Agri-Food Strategy and will focus mainly on the fishery and dairy sectors. It should enable local farmers to benefit from technology transfer in regards to modern agriculture, as well as...

Subsequent to a major failure this morning at OVH, one the world’s biggest server hosts, thousands of websites in Europe and Africa, including many media, were inaccessible. At the origin of the incident, a simple electric failure at Roubaix, Northern France, paired with the malfunction of emergency generators, and link breakages on the optical fiber laid between the group’s various data...

In Côte d’Ivoire, forecasts for cotton production in 2017/2018 have improved compared to preliminary projections. According to Mamadou Bamba, director of the Ivorian Cotton and Cashew Council (CCA), the country now expects an output of 400,000 tons of cotton at the end of the season ; this is 60,000 tons more than during the previous season and equals the annual average recorded before...

Gulf African Bank (GAB), Islamic bank operating in Kenya, and the leading local telecoms operator Safaricom, will launch by March 2018, M-sharia, a platform that will offer sharia-compliant services via mobile. According to Abdullahi Adan, director of banking services at GAB, M-sharia lies on sharia rules and targets both Muslims and non-Muslims, who are financially excluded because of the law...

In an interview with La Tribune Afrique, Jacques Diouf, former managing director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from 1994 to 2011, reacts to agricultural land grabs. He believes governments should prioritize, in order to achieve a sustainable agricultural development, land leasing more than sales. “States are sovereign. When I was director at the FAO, I always recommended...

Last Tuesday, the mining firm SEMAFO has announced that the construction of its Boungou gold mine in Burkina Faso was 63% complete and that it should start production in Q1 2018. Once online, the mine should produce an average of 226,000 ounces of gold per year over its first three years of activity. This would de-facto boost the country’s total output. In a statement released Wednesday,...

On November 7, 2017, mobile telecom operator Telma has launched a new financial service backed to its MVola Mobile Money service, “Mvola Avance”, which includes savings and loan offers. Regarding loans, all procedures are mobile based. The user can get from 1,000 Ariary ($0.32) to 500,000 Ariary ($157.85). He or she has 30 days to reimburse the loan with a single interest rate of...